Following a series of speeches in which he condemned U.S. involvement in World War I, labor leader Eugene Debs is arrested in Cleveland, Ohio, for violating the Espionage Act with the “intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States.” At his trial, Debs said, “I would oppose war if I stood alone.” He was found guilty and sentenced to ten years in prison.
The Bureau of Labor – which will become the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) – is established. Today, the BLS is a governmental agency that collects, processes, analyzes, and disseminates statistical data on employment, labor, and economics.
The St. Lawrence Seaway officially opens. The joint project between the U.S. and Canada employed 22,000 workers to build the 2,342-mile waterway system linking the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes.
The Haymarket Martyrs Monument is dedicated at Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois, to honor those framed and executed for the bombing at Chicago’s Haymarket Square on May 4, 1886. More than 8,000 people attended the dedication ceremony. At the base of the monument are the last words of Haymarket martyr August Spies: “The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today.”
Union leader, lawyer, and politician Terence V. Powderly dies. Powderly was the Grand Master Workman of the Knights of Labor – a labor organization that promoted an eight-hour workday, the end of child and convict labor, a graduated income tax, equal pay for equal work, and worker cooperatives. At its height in 1886, the Knights had over 700,000 members.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issues a cotton dust standard to protect 600,000 workers from byssinosis, also known as “brown lung.”
A horrific train wreck in northwest Indiana, between Gary and Hammond, kills an estimated 86 people and injures 127 others. The train was carrying the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus. The victims were buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois, in an area set aside as Showmen’s Rest, purchased by the Showmen’s League of America.
The American Railway Union (ARU) is founded in Chicago by locomotive fireman Eugene V. Debs and other railway workers. The ARU was an industrial union for railway workers, regardless of craft or service. Within a year, the ARU had 125 locals and very quickly grew to become the country’s largest union.
An explosion in the Hillcrest mine in the Crowsnest Pass region of western Canada kills 189 miners. It devastated the town of Hillcrest, which had a total population of about 1,000, leaving 130 women widowed and about 400 children fatherless. Many of the miners were buried in a mass grave in the Hillcrest Cemetery. It was the worst coal mining disaster in Canadian history.
During picketing of the Orgreave Coking Plant in South Yorkshire, England, police attack striking miners, arresting nearly one hundred people and injuring dozens. Ninety-five miners were arrested and charged with riot, an offense that carried a potential life sentence. The subsequent trials collapsed due to lack of evidence.
Today in Labor History 